Why I haven't been blogging

Because I've been here...

And here...

Back in a bit. Probably with stories.

On not attending BEA

A short time ago, thousands of people in the publishing industry descended upon a single convention center in New York City for one mother of an expo. It's one of the largest "book" events of the year and it attracts authors, editors, agents, librarians, book sellers, bloggers, superheroes, villains, cab drivers...the list goes on.

I did not attend Book Expo America, but being attached to someone who was attending, I did travel to New York at the time of BEA and I did reap a few benefits.

It ended up being one of the most surreal five days of my life and not only because I encountered Spiderman on the street, and ate more cupcakes than in all the years of my life combined.

Possibly the surrealitude of the week could be contributed to the total lack of sleep one can achieve while renting an apartment with friends you only see a few times a year. Possibly it was due to the fact that in said apartment, two blocks from Central Park, the noise of the city barrels through the windows at all hours of the day and night to throw erratic parties on your eardrums. Possibly it was due to the lack of actual oxygen in the air…

 

Possibly it was the cupcakes.

Either way, three things happened in New York which have altered my life in slight, yet significant ways.

First – In a little coffee shop on Tenth Avenue, I met three incredible women and I'm still surprised the shop survived our impact. The first, my agent, who is as kind and dynamic in person as she is via email. The second, my editor, who impressed me all over again with her passion for the work and BEWARE THE WILD. The third, my editor's assistant, who was insightful and equally as excited about BTW. Sitting there, with a small group of people who had found a way to love this story as much as I do, who are every bit as committed to putting in the time and energy to making it better, I realized again just how incredibly lucky I am.

Second – This one requires a modicum of backstory. When I was fourteen years old, I left my childhood home in Virginia and moved to Yokosuka, Japan. I was only there for two years, but I never made it back to the east coast and eventually fell out of touch with all my childhood friends. Such is the life of a Navy child. But – prepare yourselves, I’m about to say something NICE about Facebook – Facebook (for all its faults) changed that.

I fell back into touch with M and after nearly two solid decades of estrangement we had a four-hour reunion in the middle of New York City. We spent much of the time staring at each other in amazement saying truly profound things to each other.

Me: I can’t believe you’re in front of me.
Him: I can’t believe I’m taller than you.
Me: ……*goofy grin*

We were so wrapped up in nostalgia that after 20 minutes of walking way too fast, I felt the axis of the world shift and suddenly ALL THE PEOPLE were around me.

Me: M! ARE WE IN TIMES SQUARE?
Him: *slow blink* Yes.
Me: HOW DID WE GET HERE?
Him: ….we…walked?

Which brings me to the third life-altering experience I had in NYC.

There’s really no way to be tactful about this, but I’m going to try because this is something that may save your life in the future.

If you take away nothing else from my non-BEA experience, take this one lesson: NYC DOESN’T CARE ABOUT YOUR BLADDER.

No. It’s true. And it’s important you know this because discovering it when you’re twenty blocks away from your apartment, all the Starbucks are closing because it’s 10pm, and you’re too stubborn to hail a cab isn’t something I’d recommend.

I mean, it might change your life, but not in a Hunger Games sort of way. Rather, this will change your life in a Trainspotting sort ofway where the world is suddenly very loud and very strange (which is really saying something for NYC), and all the doors are locked and the shopkeepers all look like Delores Umbridge, and then you discover you don’t even have a key to your apartment and no one is answering your texts so WHAT HAPPENS WHEN YOU GET HOME? WHAT HAPPENS THEN???

It is FAR from pleasant.

So, there you have it, my recipe for how to have one singularly intense day in New York City. Passing ife-saving advice on to you is really just a bonus.

A town called Campeche

For most of our trip, we stayed in a town called Campeche. It's south of Merida and a good middle point for exploring mangroves and petenes, but I could have spent days just walking through the colorful streets of this city.

And by colorful, I mean this place has ALL of the colors. This was what I saw when I stepped through the doors of my hotel:


We were told that it was a real "Pirates of the Caribbean" type town (and it has all the Renaissance Festival style pirate themed pubs, restaurants, and knick-knacks to prove it). Back in the days of yore, the place was so put upon by pirates that they protected themselves from invasion by surrounding the bulk of the town in battlements. Many of these battlements still stand tall, which gave the town a very European feel - castles and churros are a delightful combination, I tell you.



Campeche is also something of an uneven city. The ground wasn't scaled when the buildings went up, which seemed to be a point of frustration to those who built the sidewalks. They, at least, are level, which was a sometimes a challenge...


From the top of the battlements we could also see that many of these lovely buildings were not all that they seemed to be. They hide a wilderness inside....I wanted to explore them.


There was a secret place inside one of the battlements with recreation musket rifles and halberds. So, of course, this happened:


And finally, Campeche is home to a cathedral I could not capture well enough with my lens. On our first night in the city, I watched a group of women bless and carry a tall statue of Our Lady of Guadalupe around the square and into the church. She was dressed in blue and waiting inside to receive the many pilgrimaging Guadalupanos.

Uxmal Ruins

I've been a horrible blogger during this trip to Mexico. Not because what I'm doing isn't blog-worthy, but I've been critiquing manuscripts and writing for and getting lost in the week long celebration that is the Day of Our Lady of Guadalupe. But tonight, it's raining and the festivities are quiet.

I'm staying in an 1800 barracks-turned-hotel in Campeche, Mexico, a World Heritage site. We're leaving tomorrow and I'll be sad to see it go, but I'm looking forward to exploring Merida.

But to backtrack a bit. Here is a photo-essay of my first full day in Mexico, exploring the ruins of Uxmal, a Mayan complex built beginning in 850AD.






Are you kidding? OF COURSE I crawled through that hole. What would Indian Jones do? (PS - There were lots of iguanas in there. Heads poking out of walls four feet above me. Watching me. Creepy is the word you're looking for.)





This is in Campeche, not Uxmal. About thirty yards from the front door of my hotel and no, it didn't look any more real standing right in front of it. 

November round-up

November certainly has a way of skating out from under me. Everything happens at this time of year. Elections, pumpkin pies, 65% of the people in my life were born in November (including myself), and 82% of the people I know give themselves over to novel-writing fury! It's a wonderfully creative month and I can't love it enough. And then it's gone. *dramatic sigh*

I spent my November tagging along with the NaNo folks, finishing a re-draft of a novel I already loved and needed to love more. Now that it's in the hands of my terribly clever crit partner, I'm reading for several other people and letting myself enjoy the energy of a new idea.

For anyone wondering how my month of no sugar went, I am happy to report it was a complete success. No particulars here, but I am extremely pleased with the experiment. Not only do I feel better now than I did at the beginning (both physically and emotionally), but I came away from it with a much better understanding of how sneaky sugars can be. Seriously, refined and cane sugars are pervasive. It's disturbing, but not insurmountable. To anyone struggling with feeling happy in their bodies, I cannot recommend this experiment enough. More details are in the post I linked to above.

Next week, I'll be off on another day-job adventure. This time we're heading south to the Yucatan Peninsula for 10 days where we'll explore ancient Mayan ruins and tromp through mangrove forests. I'll report as I go, but I've been told that the mangrove forests are the one place on earth anyone recommends wearing 100% DEET.

O_O

Also, I need scuba booties.

I say again, O_O.

Even so, I'm excited. These trips have a way of being utterly amazing (see tag: I love my job for more trips!). These trips also have a way of making me thankful when we return with the same number of people we departed with...

And in other completely unrelated news, I'm still struggling with the idea of mirroring my blog on another platform given LJ's consistent hankiness. I've worked with Blogger before, but didn't fall in love. So, I'm considering WordPress. Anyone have any thoughts about this? Strong opinions welcome.

This is the post...

. . .wherein I get to use phrases like "represented by" and "my agent." Were technology a little further along, this would also be the post from which I could shower you with confetti.

I am pleased as pudding, pie and posies to announce that I am now represented by Sarah Davies at The Greenhouse Literary Agency.

(!!!!!!!!!!!!! <-my excitement defies words) On the evening of May 15, 2011, I sent out the first queries I've sent since my senior year of high school. It was exciting and terrifying and I soon had a happy handful of requests for my manuscript. My manuscript! Things happened much faster than I ever could have hoped for and I won't go into all the details here. Instead I will skip to the part where I sign my agency agreement with an impish grin and thematic nail polish. --->

So! I am celebrating this moment. Would you like to know how? Yes, I think you would. I'm celebrating by making a potentially reckless offer that is open to anyone.

*ahem*

In celebration of being able to say the words "my agent is" I am giving away critique like it's the end of the world! This is not a contest, this is a public demonstration of my tendency to leap first and learn how to fly on the way down. Call me Icarus, with superglue.

Here's how it works.

• You send me the first 5k of your wip (I don't care if it is a complete draft or not) in an email to nataliecparker AT gmail DOT com (attached as a word doc) with the subject line: CALL ME ICARUS: title of your wip here.
• In the body of that email, please give me the following information: your name, your genre and your sensitivity level based on my newly crafted scale of fruits! See below:

I AM A PEACH - I am delicate. Look at me sideways and I'll bruise. Please be gentle and kind.
I AM AN APPLE - I've been around the block. It takes a little effort to hurt me, but it can be done. Pull your strongest punches, please.
I AM A COCONUT - I am a fortress. Bring it on.

• Cut off date is Friday, June 17th at midnight.

I will read and crit in the order in which these arrive and work as quickly as possible. That's it! Anyone and everyone is welcome because I am crazy excited!

And since it bears repeating - My agent is Sarah Davies!

But what about the boots?!

I have more things I could write about my short trip to Alaska. I could write about the seafood, the local brews (coffee and beer!), the bald eagles I met on a rooftop or how I came to discover that Alaskan garbage cans can save you from a bear attack. But I think the topic you're all dying to hear about is a little more pressing - rubber boots.

If you have no idea why you're dying to hear about the rubber boots, I'll direct you to the first post on the topic -> here there be boots.

And I want to thank everyone who shared their wisdom in that particular conversation. Your input was invaluable. So, what did I end up purchasing? KEENS! These Keens to be exact (though I found them at a much more reasonable price!). They took up roughly 32% of the space in my suitcase and added an extra 20 pounds, but I stuffed them full of wool socks and packed light on everything else.

The first two days in Juneau, I thought the rubber boot warning a little extreme. Though they do "cinder" the streets and the soil is constantly freezing and melting off, covering the sidewalks with muddy water, it hardly warranted the level of vehemence I picked up in our conference calls. Nevertheless, I was pleased to have my boots while trekking to and from the hotel and deciding they would be useful for similarly murky times in Kansas.

On the third day, we hit the glacier and that was when I realized exactly why I had my rubber boots. Grippy and insulated, they made the trek to and from the glacier (which we have now decided was roughly 5 miles total) much more comfortable than it otherwise would have been.

My colleagues who did not take the rubber boot warning seriously, ended up wading through piles of snow and slush in nothing more than tennis shoes. More than once I heard people asking how quickly frost bite could settle in and I was more than a little worried that we would not return to Kansas with as many digits as we arrived with.

Just imagine walking through this for a mile in your regular, lightweight tennis shoes. . .



Obviously, no one lost any toes, but I was far more comfortable at the end of the day than many. Even the Alaska folks (who predominantly wore XtraTufs - bonus points to everyone who recommended those) were approving of my bright blue babies.

How blue were they? GLACIER BLUE.



They served me well, I must say. Very well, indeed. In fact, the joy you see on my face below? That's all about the boots.

Okay, and maybe a little about the glacier, too.

...

Maybe a lot about the glacier, but at least partly about the boots. Let's say 32% about the boots.



So here is what I know: if you're going to Alaska, TAKE RUBBER BOOTS.

Also, a side note of awesome about that last picture - I called Tessa Gratton from that exact spot. And texted her that picture. From the middle of a frozen lake, chilling on an iceberg, about to lick a glacier, I was able to share that moment with her. CRAZY.

Moar Glacier Pr0n

One brief addendum.

Of our group of 33, only 2 climbed up and into that teardrop cave. One of those two is pictured below and she paid the price in a little bit of blood on her way out of said cave.

But I'm so glad she did because omgthecolors!

Mendenhall Glacier

Yesterday afternoon, we all took a break from conferencing and signed up for various field trips. One of those trips was to hike out to the Mendenhall Glacier and I don't remember what the others were because they did not include the words "hike" or "glacier."

We piled into a school bus and made the incredibly short trek from downtown Juneau to the Tongass National Forest. And basically, we came around a corner and BLAM! GLACIER!

None of these pictures are going to do the experience justice, I'll just put that out there.

Even from a distance of 1.5 miles, we could see how blue the ice was and how fractured and ready for calving (*gulp*).

Cue the science - See where I'm standing? Approximately 1.5 miles from the face of the glacier? Well, in 1938, you could touch the glacier from pretty much right there. This thing has seen tremendous loss of sea ice in the past century and even in the past five years. Changes both dramatic and startling.

We were told that as it is March, and the thing between us and the glacier is a melting lake, trekking out to the glacier from was NOT recommended. The last calving event (when mama glaciers birth baby bergs) was on March 4th (*gulp*).

But out we all went because when are we ever going to be so close to a glacier like this again and the ice looks good and solid. . .

So away we went! And here's the thing about trekking across an lake covered in ice and snow - you are constantly falling. Not down on your hands and knees, but through the snow until it decides to catch you again and laugh at your expense. Basically, I spent a lot of time feeling the ground give way beneath me and wondering if I'd actually found a whole that would drop me into the freezing lake.

I'm really not joking.

Really.

Here's proof.

This was very close to the glacier where icebergs had torn through giant sections of lake and we had to tread very, very carefully.

Unnerving doesn't really begin to cover it, but again, worth it and what kind of Sagittarius would I be if I didn't do things that make normal people make the o_O face?

And why did we cross the hole of icy death? To get to the other side!!!



I did not actually make it to that tear drop cave because as my group and I  stood strategizing our approach (which berg to climb? is that the ice that guy fell through a few minutes ago?) we watched the rough edge of the ice sheet we stood on break away and fall into the lake. It was followed by many a groaning, popping sound you DON'T want to hear ice make unless it's on your TV screen and collectively decided to put a little distance between us and the unstable ice.

(I'm not the craziest of Sag's after all!)

On our way back to solid ground, there were bear tracks and water falls and many a breath-taking sight. I'm including a few of my favorite photos below. They can tell you better than I can this morning just how much beauty lives in that ice.

Looking through the ice.


Melting.


A risky journey to the ice face.


Midnight sun (okay, not really, but sorta).

Alaska

After 3 flights including 4 take-offs and landings, 2 buses and 18 hours, we arrived at our hotel in Alaska. Considering the grueling schedule and the fact that I was coordinating travel for 19 people, it was actually a relatively easy trip.

Our stop in Seattle was long enough for me to grab a bowl of Ivar's clam chowder which I haven't had since I lived in the area nearly a decade ago (um, whoa how time flies). I may have squealed with culinary joy when I saw the sign and promptly took control of the dinner decision. The people with me are now Ivar's converts. If you ever get to Seattle, this is a MUST eat. Do not pass go!

And we interrupt this Ivar's lovefest for an image the Coastal Range, which we flew over on our way to Juneau via Kechikan.




By the time we got here, most of us were pretty sure we'd traveled far enough to be on another continent or at least in another country. And even now, having slept, Alaska still feels a little like another country. It's a place where someone from farther north can ask, "So, are all your roads in Juneau paved?" and it's a totally legitimate question. I feel it's important to remind you at this time that Juneau is the state capitol.

PS - Did you know you can only get to Juneau by air or by sea? There are no roads in or out. I can't decide if this is a good thing or a bad thing for surviving the zombie apocalypse.

Suppose it depends on where it starts. And how. /over-thinking it

It's the end of our first full day here and I'm still totally confused about the time and this advertisement I walked past:



I don't know why I find this as disturbing as I do, but the diamond mustache is just so. . . weird. I mean, why did this seem like a good idea? Can you explain it to me? Please try.

Also, the ravens here are big enough to EAT MY CATS. And when they caw at you, it's about like you would expect.

Terrifying.



And finally, a shot of the harbor and the mountains of Douglas Island. Tomorrow, the conference officially begins and soon after will be our trip out to Mendenhall glacier!

So far, the rubber boots have seen zero action, but they promise the weather will turn by morning and then they will be out and about!

Better than a bear trap?

In the next few weeks, I'll be going to Alaska for a week. It's not a vacation, but a business trip, which might not sound all that exciting, but a business trip with scientists and researchers is rarely dull.

When we asked what we should pack for a trip to Alaska in March, we were given a single item and it wasn't one that any of us was expecting to hear.  I mean, if you're going to Alaska and there is ONE thing that's essential for your survival, I'm thinking reflective blanket, a bear trap or maybe a grappling hook. I wasn't expecting rubber boots.

How can rubber boots be the Most Essential Thing I will need? I was under the rather strong assumption that Alaska is not a swamp or even a wetland. It's not below sea level, right? But when we asked for any other packing guide, we were given a stoic shake of the head and, again, the words: rubber boots.

So, I'm thinking this is pretty serious and I do NOT want to get to Alaska without the crucial piece of my wardrobe, but searching rubber boots on Google is about as useful as searching for comfortable bras. It's just not helpful.

Do I go for the standard, reliable rubber boot?



Something more fun and artsy?



Something trendy?



Or something totally industrial and uninteresting?



I just don't know. And I'm feeling a little overwhelmed. Like this ->  O_O

It totally depends on what the purpose is. Are these for safety and comfort? Or is this a fashion thing to keep us from sticking out like the big Kansan thumbs?

Do you wear rubber boots? Any insight to share with me? I'm listening.

Also, and unrelatedly, you can check out a short story by moi on Tangled Fiction today.  Every forth week we're each posting single-authored shorts to change things up a bit. Today, mine is Butterfly Girl.